Mining cryptocoins is an arms race that rewards early adopters. You might have heard of Bitcoin, the first decentralized cryptocurrency that was released in early 2009. Similar digital currencies have crept into the worldwide market since then, including a spin-off from Bitcoin called Bitcoin Cash. You can get in on the cryptocurrency rush if you take the time to learn the basics properly.

Which Alt-Coins Should Be Mined?

If you had started mining Bitcoins back in 2009, you could have earned thousands of dollars by now. At the same time, there are plenty of ways you could have lost money, too. Bitcoinsare not a good choice for beginning miners who work on a small scale. The current up-front investment and maintenance costs, not to mention the sheer mathematical difficulty of the process, just doesn’t make it profitable for consumer-level hardware. Now, Bitcoin mining is reserved for large-scale operations only.

1 BTC =

3994.55000 USD

1 BTC =

3510.28000 EUR

1 BTC =

68.0300000 LTC

1 BTC =

29.4900000 ETH

1 BTC =

3044.12000 GBP

1 BTC =

5593.25000 AUD

1 BTC =

5304.90000 CAD

As a second income, no, cryptocoin mining is not a reliable way to make substantial money for most. The profit from mining cryptocoins only becomes significant when someone is willing to invest $3000-$5000 in up-front, at which time you could potentially earn $50 per day or more.

How Cryptocoin Mining Works

Let’s focus on mining ‘scrypt’ coins, namely Litecoins, Dogecoins, or Feathercoins. The whole focus of mining is to accomplish three things:

Get paid a small reward for your accounting services by receiving fractions of coins every couple of days.

Keep your personal costs down, including electricity and hardware.

As a hobby venture, yes, cryptocoin mining can generate a small income of perhaps a dollar or two per day. In particular, the digital currencies mentioned above are very accessible for regular people to mine, and a person can recoup $1000 in hardware costs in about 18-24 months.